Little Secrets: Unexpectedly Pregnant. Joss Wood

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       Four

      Tyce guided Sage to a chair and stepped away from the table, deliberately walking over to the far side of the room and leaning his shoulder into the wall, crossing his feet at the ankle. It was an insolent pose, a deliberate maneuver to keep the Ballantyne men off-balance. Tyce had deliberately dressed down for this meeting; he wore faded, paint-splattered jeans over flat-heeled boots and a clean black button-down shirt over a black T-shirt, cuffs rolled back. Linc and Beck were dressed in designer suits; Jaeger was a little less formal in suit pants and a pale cream sweater.

      Sage, well, Sage looked stunning in the clashing colors of pink and red, most of her hair in a messy knot on top of her head, tendrils framing her face and falling down the back of her neck. She was innately stylish, yet people assumed it took her hours to look so perfectly put-together, but he’d seen Sage on the move; she could shove her hair up in thirty seconds, could dress in another minute. Sage wasn’t one for spending hours in front of a mirror.

      Tyce looked at her face and frowned at the blue stripes under her eyes, at the pallor in her skin. She looked like she’d dropped weight and it was weight she could ill afford. She kept sucking her bottom lip between her teeth, darting anxious looks at his face. Tyce, deliberately, kept his expression blank, his face a mask. She could’ve avoided this meeting, he reminded himself; she could’ve taken one of his many calls; they could’ve done this differently. But, after trying to reach her for two weeks, her refusal to see him or talk to him limited his options so he contacted Linc and convinced him that a meeting would be beneficial to all parties.

      Tyce watched as Linc stepped forward and placed both his hands on Sage’s shoulders, his gentle squeeze conveying his support. Jaeger and Beck flanked Sage on either side, arms folded and jaws tense. Her brothers were very protective of their sister and he hoped that this conversation wouldn’t turn physical but who the hell knew? When you were dealing with family and money and business, anything could happen.

      “Since you asked for this meeting, Latimore, would you like to get the party started?” Linc asked, his voice as cold as a subzero fridge.

      Tyce nodded, straightened and walked to the table, pulling out a chair at the head, another deliberate gesture. It was a silent screw you to their pecking order, telling Linc and his brothers that he wasn’t going to neatly slot into their order of command.

      Tyce rested his forearms on the table. He turned his head to look at Sage and wished that they were alone, that he could kiss her luscious mouth, trace the fine line of her jaw, kiss his way down her long neck to her shoulders. Peel her clothes from her body...

      Tyce sighed. He was imagining Sage naked because, yeah, that was helpful. He ran his hand across his face and caught Sage’s eye.

      “This could’ve gone differently, Sage. If you had taken my calls, answered my emails, had a goddamn conversation with me, I wouldn’t have had to do it like this.”

      Ignoring her frown, Tyce reached across the table and pulled his folder toward him. He flipped open the cover and withdrew a sheaf of papers and tossed them in Linc’s general direction. “Share certificates showing that Lach-Ty owns around fifteen percent of Ballantyne’s.”

      Four backs straightened, four jaws tensed. Linc picked up the share certificates, examined them and carefully placed them facedown on the table. “Would you care to explain,” he asked in a dangerous-as-hell voice, “why you own fifteen percent of our company?”

      Sure, that was why he was here, after all. “Technically, I don’t own the shares. I just paid for them.”

      Linc gripped the table, his hands and knuckles white. “Then who does own the shares and why the hell did you pay for them?”

      “My sister owns those shares because I thought it was right that she owned a percentage of the company her father left to you.” Tyce hesitated and thought that he might as well get it all out there so that they could move forward from a basis of truth. “I thought that, since your sister is carrying my baby, it was time to lay my cards on the table.”

      And that, Tyce thought, his eyes moving from one shocked Ballantyne to another, was how you dropped a bombshell.

      Shock, horror, surprise, anger...all the emotions he expected were in their faces, coating their questions, their shouted demands for more information. Tyce ignored СКАЧАТЬ